Saudi Center for Fine Art

Saudi Center for Fine Art is a fine art center, established in 1985 to support fine arts by organizing exhibitions and training courses for young and adults. It offers certificates accredited by the Ministry of Culture. The headquarters is in Jeddah city.

The center has a special section for women and children with a workshop devoted to children to teach them drawing. The men's section is located in the men’s gallery, with an area of one thousand m displaying more than two hundred artworks. The gallery is dedicated to festivals and art exhibitions, and hosts students to study fine arts, Arabic calligraphy, and other skills.

The teaching curriculum at the Saudi Center for Fine Arts is based on teaching fine art from the early beginnings of how to correctly hold a pencil until placing the final touches on a work of art. Students study how to draw in pencil, an introduction to painting, the study of perspective, magnification and miniaturization, schools of art, shadow, and light, and how to use, handle, and mix colored oil paint. The center also offers theoretical studies on the history of art and the pioneers of the Renaissance, Islamic art, and Saudi art and its pioneers and their contributions.

The curriculum is offered at four levels. Enrollees in the first-level course submit four paintings depicting silent nature, heritage, and flowers with a landscape. The application of perspective studies has to be considered in these paintings. At the end of the level, enrollees submit a painting of their choice showing the extent of their benefit from the course, along with a theoretical test.

In the second level, enrollees are given an idea about Islamic arts and Arabic calligraphy style. In the third and fourth levels, they study various schools of fine arts such as Impressionism, Surrealism, Abstraction, and Cubism. And here, students complete the study of the curriculum, Photographs of exhibitions held by the center are distributed to enrollees, along with explanatory commentary of some tableaus. They are also awarded certificates accredited by the Ministry of Culture.

Courses are periodically organized throughout the year for children and adults. During summer vacation, courses are held for male and female students of different ages. Courses include fine arts and oil painting courses for adults, and watercolor painting, as well as glass, copper, and canvas painting for children, in addition to ceramic, porcelain, fabric decoupage, relief decoupage, charcoal, and pastel drawing, in addition to Arabic calligraphy courses, among others.

Alongside fine art courses, the center also offers courses in Arabic calligraphy on four levels. The students learn how to hold the pen used to inscribe Arabic calligraphy, as well as bamboo and inks suitable for ancient Arabic scripts, such as Diwani, Ruqaah, Naskh, Thuluth, Kufic, and other scripts. Enrollees become qualified to work as adept calligraphers upon graduation, and the Saudi Center for Fine Arts offers them certificates at the end of the courses.

The center offers courses in metal embossing, silk, fabric printing, compressed cork, and decoupage, in addition to charcoal and pastel, gift wrapping, flower arrangement, and light-accessories making courses.